Systems which provide users with access to a large volume of documents are sometimes required to select a subset of the documents for display to a user. For example, since displays are of a limited size, it is sometimes necessary to select only a portion of all available documents for display to a user.
Similarly, it is often necessary to prioritize documents for display to user since a user's attention span and available time may be limited. That is, it may be necessary or desirable to display documents which are of a higher priority higher in a list than other documents which are of a lower priority. Typically, systems attempt to display documents which are likely to be more interesting at a higher position than documents which are likely to be less interesting.
The problem of selecting and prioritizing documents is a problem which may arise, for example, with search engine systems which index a large volume of documents. Users are more likely to view search results which are displayed more highly in a list of search results. Accordingly, it may be desirable to select and prioritize search results so that results which are displayed more highly are results which are likely to be useful to a user.
Similarly, news aggregation systems may be required to select and prioritize documents. News aggregation systems and websites may analyze content from various sources and may provide access to that content through a common portal. Since news aggregation systems and websites index content from many different sources, the number of stories and documents which are indexed by such systems and websites may be quite large. Accordingly, news aggregation systems may select and prioritize documents in order to provide users with access to documents which may be of interest to such users.
Similar reference numerals are used in different figures to denote similar components.